That might be sticky for a game that determines your path via A*. Can you get to your destination tile without running past the melee-happy berserker? When mousing over the destination tile, I should probably highlight the path too ...

Ah, it seems I was mistaken. Attacks of Opportunity happen when a player leaves a threatened square, which I'm not sure happens while a character is moving, only if they stopped there, and then started moving does it trigger.

So theres that.

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I can't say I'm huge on unnecessary random chance elements in a tactical game. Might be nice for a Ninja perk ...

It is just a small chance (at least for normal characters, I think I had one of my fighters setup to almost always get an AoO).

Sometimes a combatant in a melee lets her guard down. In this case, combatants near her can take advantage of her lapse in defense to attack her for free. These free attacks are called attacks of opportunity.

OICW: Almost everyone I know is a Warhammer fan. Actually, I don't know of flanking in that game, unless it only applies to large units like transports. Usually when it comes to melee, they put all their units in a pile and do something called "Assault"? I don't know, not an expert ...

I'm not an expert too, but I've overheard conversation where the guy mentioned that the big unit (tank or transport) is more vurnerable from the sides. Sure, the cannon fodder doesn't use such elaborate effects.

[My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online]"Final Fantasy XIV, I feel that anything I could say will be repeating myself, so I'm just gonna express my feelings with a strangled noise from the back of my throat. Graaarghhhh..." - Yahtzee"Uhm... this is a.cc. Did you honestly think this thread WOULDN'T be derailed and ruined?" - BAF"You can discuss it, you can dislike it, you can disagree with it, but that's all what you can do with it"

Attacks of Opportunity are granted if an action causes an AoA (like spell casting in melée range without the proper talents, standing up from being prone, etc) or during movement when a threatened square is left. That doesn't mean the movement has to stop, though.You just need to enter and leave a threatened square during your move action to provoke an AoA. You can avoid AoA by tumbling, by using feats or by moving carefully. At least if we talk 3.x rules, never got much into 4.x rules.

--There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

If you could move all 5 at once you could swarm and kill an enemy character before they could defend themselves, retreat, or heal.

That's the whole idea of some games. XD

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I may add checks so you can't have more than three units in a row from the same team act, just for balance.

I personally very much dislike this idea. I don't see what's wrong with trying to let my army fight in unison (or prepare them for that one decisive strike).What if attacking a slower unit (or a more armoured one) caused a bigger turn-cooldown time? Then you could still have your units move in unison, but as soon as the battle begins the slower units start getting an advantage.

I also like the 'trample' idea. But that brings to my mind a cavalier that fights like a divebomber and has to move across enemies to attack and is restricted to 120° turns. But that seems what you are trying to prevent. This is giving me all sorts of ideas for a an alternative use of direction...

I personally very much dislike this idea. I don't see what's wrong with trying to let my army fight in unison (or prepare them for that one decisive strike).

I'm not keen on it either; I'm just throwing it out there. It would be very difficult to time such a thing anyway.

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But that brings to my mind a cavalier that fights like a divebomber and has to move across enemies to attack and is restricted to 120° turns. But that seems what you are trying to prevent. This is giving me all sorts of ideas for a an alternative use of direction...

I'm not completely opposed to use of direction; the paladin Defend ability will allow you to choose a direction to face (he has no effect on the 3 tiles behind him). Extrapolate on this divebomber idea.

Yes, sir! The way I was thinking, the cavalier has about 8 tiles to move, but he has to move 8 tiles when attacking, and not only that; he also can't strike the enemy on his last tile. For example in the most extreme case, that you force a 4-tile run-down, he has to be exactly four tiles away to attack and needs a room of at least four tile behind the enemy to attack.But I also wanted to force him to move in almost straight-lines: no sharp 240° or 360° turns for him.An advantage that you could give him is walking over the actual tile the enemy is occupating. (Except a guarding paladin.)The turning angle would imply though that you best attack him from the rear. The cavaliers as a whole would be constantly moving to get good angles and attacks.

What if you consider how many times a unit is attacked between his own attacks?

If a unit is only attacked once he gets full defence. But for each extra attack he loses a bit of defence because of the increased difficulty in reacting to all of them. Once the unit attacks again his full defence is restored.

You could also take into account the direction of consecutive attacks so a real backstab attack would wear down the defence faster.

One important suggestion, since turns are soldier specific, make some sort of very clear indication of the order of the next turns. Maybe something like the HoMM5 bar that shows the next X turns with a picture of the soldier.

I second that: The order of play will have enormous effect, so it should be made as clear as possible.

About cavaliers (and charging in general) you could "simply" give a bonus depending on the number of tiles of movement in straight line before the hit. Bad terrain already reduces the movement, so it would naturally reduce the bonus.

Good ideas. Yes, you can call up the list of upcoming turns at almost any time, another thing FFT had.

I was starting to take the divebombing idea literally; maybe a charging unit could be a small dragon or large bird that the Summoner can conjure. It has a short movement radius, a weak melee, but can hit any unit (exactly) X number of tiles away with a powerful charge. More or less distance, and the damage weakens. Having to be able to fly through a range and a slow rate of turning are also options.

I need to go play that Battle for Wesnoth game like I said I was going to and didn't ...

I played it. It was alright; a little too complex for my tastes (very little action you could take, but geez a whole lot of tiny little numbers). The UI was not the easiest thing to read, and I prefer the resource management stay on the RTS side personally. I liked how the healers auto-healed anyone they were adjacent to, that was kind of clever, but even then it seemed to remove interactivity. The worst was when I had clearly almost won, and then the elf dude goes "OMG YOU TOOK TOO LONG WE LOST" and it's game over. wtf? No one mentioned a time limit.

Ah well. We'll see how soon I can get a simple playable demo out, preferably with decent AI. Maybe I'll even learn networking so people can play each other.

I like turn-based tactical games even when they have bad AI. I don't think any of the games that have been mentioned so far had any AI with more than unit-level behavior.

Just design maps/scenarii where the player is outnumbered, or any other case where it's easy to "lose", and let him experiment and try revert the odds. The game will be good if the player can explore enough of the game mechanics to invent creative ways of using the terrain, units skills, or even use the enemy against itself.

I have one idea about the units speeds, that I haven't seen used anywhere : If for example 3 of the player's units can move before one of the other party, you could let the player move them in any order. It would give the player more choices, and let the units coordinate/collaborate more.

I'm all for units with unusual capabilities, it's more interesting to play than brute force. For example in Fire Emblem, the Dancer/Bard can not fight, only grant a second turn to one of your units. It's highly underrated in all the FAQs I've read, but I find it an excellent member of a group, allowing many options like:- Your best unit plays (and attacks) twice.- Fix a mistake when you've left a vulnerable unit in grave danger - let it flee- When the whole troup moves for many turns, make the slowest unit(s) catch up. It significantly reduces travel time, and those slow dwarves no longer arrive after the battle is over.

I have an idea for a Time Mage class that can do some of that. The Mage can also teleport friendly units (probably at high mana cost). I need a better name than Time Mage though so I'm not completely humping FFT's leg ... Quantum Relativist? Reality Displacer? L33t HaX0r? Minor Diety?

How about a black hole (or something) skill that lets you create a tiny black hole (one tile in size) and it would sucks everything in a given radius (indicated by whatever means you see fit) one square towards it every turn (except huge units; dealing lots of damage to anything that occupies that tile each turn)?

References

There's one time-travel-y spell I have in mind; on the Time Mage's turn, he can cast a spell on one of your units that creates a replica of that unit within the unit's move radius, and an immediate action. In other words, that unit, from the future, moves both across the board and backwards in time so you get two of them. The next time that unit's turn comes up, the copy at the original position vanishes and the renaming copy gets its move and action as normal. I think it's more interesting than "you get two turns" (effectively what's happening), and it creates a bit of vulnerability since the unit is now attackable from two locations and shares a health meter.

EDIT: Actually, killing the original before it time traveled would probably have no effect. Gotta keep some logic to it. Maybe I should give the original another action just before it vanishes ... that might be overpowered though ...

I notice you use hexagon as tiles. Wouldn't this result in awkward movements? For example, I can move diagonal on each direction and I can go directly left or right... What about up and down? Wouldn't it be more movement balanced to use octagons?

For additional fun, this tiling is actually functionally identical to a hex grid, if you assume every neighbour is at distance 1 from a tile.

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